For the first time, this facsimile, complete with elaborate folding sections, allows readers to explore this enigma in all its stunning detail, from its one-of-a-kind 'Voynichese' text to its illustrations of otherworldly plants, unfamiliar constellations, and naked women swimming though fantastical tubes and green baths. The book's language has eluded decipherment, and its elaborate illustrations remain as baffling as they are beautiful. The manuscript appears and disappears throughout history, from the library of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II to a secret sale of books in 1903 by the Society of Jesus in Rome. Written in an unknown script by an unknown author, the manuscript has no clearer purpose now than when it was rediscovered in 1912 by rare books dealer Wilfrid Voynich.

Many call the fifteenth-century codex, commonly known as the 'Voynich Manuscript,' the world's most mysterious book. The Voynich Manuscript is produced from new photographs of the entire original and accompanied by expert essays that invite anyone to understand and explore the enigma. Finding reliable support for even this theory, however, has proved to be a challenge.The first authorized copy of this mysterious, much-speculated-upon, one-of-a-kind, centuries-old puzzle. A number of experts contend that the manuscript is simply a wildly elaborate and remarkable hoax. Emperor Rudolph II allegedly believed the author to be the Franciscan Monk and scientist, Roger Bacon (1214 -1292), an assertion that is given some credence today although the book's authorship remains the subject of fierce debate and speculation (especially since a recent carbon-dating of the manuscript places its creation at the beginning of the 15th Century).

Passed through the hands of a variety of movers and shakers in the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries, the Voynich Manuscript is said to have been in the possession of Roman Emperor Rudolph II, alchemist George Baresch, and Athanasius Kircher at various points. Adding to the confusion is the relative obscurity of the manuscript's origins. Others suggest that it is written in a hitherto unknown Germanic language or Nahuatl language, which would have its origins in central Mexico. Because the word structures seem to be similar to those of Central and East Asian languages of the 15th Century, some linguists have suggested that the manuscript is written in a phonetic script invented to express a Vietnamese, Chinese, or Tibetan language. Although the book remains utterly indecipherable to this day, linguists have uncovered a variety of patterns in the text that they've deemed consistent with the structure of several natural languages. But despite the innumerable hours experts have spent poring over its pages, the boundless sea of question marks and dead-ends obscuring the manuscript's true origin and meaning threatens to drown what little confirmed knowledge years of scholarship has yielded. Lose yourself in one of mankind's oldest mysteries! An object of centuries of study and speculation, The Voynich Manuscript has been puzzling and exciting inquisitive minds since it was brought to academic attention in the 17th Century.

Voynich manuscript facsimile